An audacious title for a film? But ultimately a playful rather than presumptuous outing. Well, as "playful" as a trickster god can be with one of his subjects, or as a filmmaker can be with the fragile psyche of his subject.
The "images" in the film often settle on glass objects, several times focusing the frame on a camera's lens to make the symbol as transparent as can be. We are reminded that how we see things, the medium we look through, is crucial. Thus how the main character, Catherine, here views the world is shown to be unreliable.
The suspense of the film mounted strongly for me in the first half, it avoids being a mere whodunnit in favor of whodonewhat, if anyone did anything. Susannah York I thought was excellent as the jittery lead, and having her cast as a children's fantasy writer was a nice touch. Somehow that made her seem more susceptible to madness and a break from reality. Her psychosis seems to have a sexual link, if that pushes your buttons.
Reading in bits of her fantasy over the film might bother folks (those who hate any sort of narration), but here the fact that the narration has nothing to do with what is on screen again underscores that sort of madness. We all have been doing one thing while thinking of another, but by and large the doing part is dominant. Here the dubbed in narration makes it feel like the thinking is eclipsing the doing.
The male characters all have a seventies stiffness, especially Rene Auberjonois who seemed like he was taken from a cassette on how to talk like and be a successful US businessman. Not sure if that bugged me as much as trying to place him as the younger version of the shape-shifting Constable Odo. Allegedly Altman wanted Sophia Loren once in the female role, but I think York was the better choice, as her sultriness unwraps itself more surprisingly. Sophia's genie would be hard to keep in the bottle.
Overall a pleasant surprise to me, the video quality of my rental from Netflix was not as splotchy as others' copies, but the idea of this being a good rainy day watch, I'll second. The first half was an 8, the second a 6...so...
7/10 Thurston Hunger
The "images" in the film often settle on glass objects, several times focusing the frame on a camera's lens to make the symbol as transparent as can be. We are reminded that how we see things, the medium we look through, is crucial. Thus how the main character, Catherine, here views the world is shown to be unreliable.
The suspense of the film mounted strongly for me in the first half, it avoids being a mere whodunnit in favor of whodonewhat, if anyone did anything. Susannah York I thought was excellent as the jittery lead, and having her cast as a children's fantasy writer was a nice touch. Somehow that made her seem more susceptible to madness and a break from reality. Her psychosis seems to have a sexual link, if that pushes your buttons.
Reading in bits of her fantasy over the film might bother folks (those who hate any sort of narration), but here the fact that the narration has nothing to do with what is on screen again underscores that sort of madness. We all have been doing one thing while thinking of another, but by and large the doing part is dominant. Here the dubbed in narration makes it feel like the thinking is eclipsing the doing.
The male characters all have a seventies stiffness, especially Rene Auberjonois who seemed like he was taken from a cassette on how to talk like and be a successful US businessman. Not sure if that bugged me as much as trying to place him as the younger version of the shape-shifting Constable Odo. Allegedly Altman wanted Sophia Loren once in the female role, but I think York was the better choice, as her sultriness unwraps itself more surprisingly. Sophia's genie would be hard to keep in the bottle.
Overall a pleasant surprise to me, the video quality of my rental from Netflix was not as splotchy as others' copies, but the idea of this being a good rainy day watch, I'll second. The first half was an 8, the second a 6...so...
7/10 Thurston Hunger